1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique to determine an input operation of a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, “drag” means that the position of a mouse cursor is shifted while continuously pressing a mouse button. Further, “drop” means that the continuously-pressed mouse button is then released.
Similarly, the “drag” also means that a touch position is shifted while a pointer such as a stylus or a finger touches an arbitrary position of a touch panel. Further, the “drop” also means that the touching finger is then separated from the touch panel.
In addition, “flick” means that the pointer touches an arbitrary position of the touch panel and is then released after performing sweeping-like operation thereon. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,814 discusses a technique to determine that the flick occurs when a movement speed at the position on a touch panel touched by a finger satisfies a predetermined reference value.
Moreover, such a technique is well known to inertially move an object displayed on a screen based on the sweeping-like direction of a flick after separating the finger from the touch panel with the flick.
However, the following problem may occur with a touch panel that can simultaneously receive the drag and the flick.
For example, it is assumed that a displayed object is moved to a desired position with the drag and the object is displayed at a drop position. However, the drag may be determined as a flick because the finger is moved and released with the sweeping-like operation when performing the drop, and the object can be moved on the screen in the detected direction of the sweeping-like operation.